Abstract
BackgroundEpicondylitis humeri is acommon disease with aprevalence of 1.7%. One of the treatment options is radiotherapy. Most published cases were treated with the orthovoltage technique or with atelecobalt device. Many radiotherapy institutions are nowadays using linear accelerators for treatment of epicondylitis humeri. There is adiscussion whether the treatment results with linear ...
Abstract
BackgroundEpicondylitis humeri is acommon disease with aprevalence of 1.7%. One of the treatment options is radiotherapy. Most published cases were treated with the orthovoltage technique or with atelecobalt device. Many radiotherapy institutions are nowadays using linear accelerators for treatment of epicondylitis humeri. There is adiscussion whether the treatment results with linear accelerators are comparable to the orthovoltage technique. The aim of this study was to analyze the results of radiotherapy with alinear accelerator for epicondylitis humeri.Material and methodsThe analysis was performed on patients of 2 German radiotherapy institutions and included 138 irradiated elbows. Pain was documented with the numeric rating scale (NRS). Evaluation of the NRS was done before and directly after each radiation therapy course as well as for the follow-up of 24months. The median age of the patients was 49years with 48.4% male and 51.6% female. In all, 81.0% were suffering from from epicondylitis humeri radialis while 16.7% were treated because of epicondylitis humeri ulnaris. In 65.4% the dominant arm was treated.ResultsAsignificant response to radiotherapy could be found. For the whole sample the median pain was 7 on the NRS before radiotherapy, 4 after 6weeks and 0 after 12 and 24months. The percentage of patients with0 or1 on the NRS was 64.6% 12months after radiotherapy. All subgroups, notably those with epicondylitis humeri radialis and epicondylitis humeri ulnaris had asignificant reduction of pain.ConclusionRadiotherapy of epicondylitis humeri with alinear accelerator is an effective treatment without showing side effects. All analyzed subgroups showed agood response to radiotherapy for at least 24months.
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